Ad Search Runs Into A Delay

College Football - UCF

Ucf's President Had To Revise His Timetable When The Final List Of Aspirants Wasn't Ready.

April 23, 2002|By Alan Schmadtke, Sentinel Staff Writer

The search for Steve Sloan's replacement has barely begun and UCF already acknowledges it will need more time to find its next athletic director.

Members of the school's search committee met for the first time Monday afternoon and embraced their charge from UCF President John Hitt, but they didn't get their hands on what they really wanted -- the final list of official applicants.

ISP Sports informed school officials earlier Monday it needed more time to cull the applicants to a workable number of semifinalists. Those semifinalists are the initial targets of the 17-member committee, which eventually will present Hitt with two, three or four finalists.

"It's disappointing," search committee chairman Sandy Robinson said of the delay. "I think that's what most of us were looking forward to. But we were able to get some things accomplished."

Hitt told the committee the step-grandfather of ISP President Ben Sutton died over the weekend, putting behind Sutton's process of whittling down the candidate list. UCF engaged ISP to collect applications and resumes, then to pass along the most qualified candidates.

Hitt, who will not be a part of the committee, said Sutton told him UCF would have a list of "about 10 semifinalists" by Thursday.

In the next breath, however, Hitt surrendered his timeline of having an athletic director hired by the first week of May. Instead, he asked to have someone hired before Sloan's last day, June 30.

"I was hoping against hope," Hitt said. "But I do think we can get this done before Steve's departure."

Sloan resigned earlier this month to become athletic director at UT-Chattanooga, near where he grew up.

Although it did not glean much new candidate information Monday, the committee did discover what Hitt wants from his new athletic director: "I really would like to see someone come in with fire in their belly someone who is willing to come in and work 14, 16, 18 hours a day to get our coaches and athletes what they deserve."

More specifically -- and in no certain order -- the president wants someone with experience supervising coaches at the Division I level, someone with a commitment to gender equity and someone who understands the nuances of raising money from inside the program and from boosters. Plus someone with integrity.

"I'm not going to worry every night before I go to sleep about whether we have a clean athletic department," he said. "That's not how I'm going to live my life."

The committee plans to meet again Thursday. It expects to inspect resume packages over the weekend before reconvening next week.

Hitt believes ISP's recommendations will be full of first- and second-lieutenants at high-profile I-A schools.

A source close to ISP, who asked not to be identified because of a relationship with both ISP and UCF, said there were several big-name applicants who waited until Friday to submit their resumes to ISP. Although the company released two previous preliminary lists of AD candidates, it declined to do so after the two-week application window ended at the close of business Friday.